It’s Not Impossible: Bringing Derived Words Out of the Shadows in an Electronic Dictionary

The paper proposes that expanded and improved treatment of morphological information is both needed and newly possible in electronic English dictionaries, including dictionaries for native speakers. The focus is dictionary selection, treatment, and presentation of derived words. Inconsistencies and inadequacies can be attributed not only to print’s legacy, but also to assumptions about native speakers’ automatic acquisition and application of word formation rules that are challenged in this paper, and to the more philosophical problem of how the lexicalized word relates to the morphologists’ word. Word Formation Rules developed in linguistics and the properties of electronic media enable lexicographers to produce and display new entry information and new navigational pathways through dictionary data.